While some skeptical scenarios use the idea of a simulated reality to challenge the reliability of human cognition, contemporary technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality can also inform experience. Although it is not a widely accepted position, various thought experiments undermining the reliability of human cognitive faculties are discussed in the academic literature. Moral skepticism is the view that there is no moral knowledge, for instance, that one cannot know whether a given behavior is morally right or wrong. Some forms target specific domains of knowledge, such as religious skepticism, which denies that beliefs about God or other religious doctrines amount to knowledge. Philosophers examine various limitations of knowledge or obstacles to the cognitive contact with reality. Philosophers discuss various sources of knowledge as ways of how this cognitive contact is established, including perception, introspection, reason, memory, and testimony.
In the social sciences, critical realism holds that observable events in the social world only partially disclose reality. Local realism is a view that combines the principle of locality with the notion that there are definite physical properties, whether or not they are being observed by someone. mister golden For example, psychologism asserts that mathematical objects are mental constructions or ideas rather than abstract objects. It holds that this practice can be useful in some contexts without ascribing substantive or framework-independent reality to such entities. According to conceptualism, universals exist in the mind as concepts through which people categorize and order their impressions, acting as tools of cognitive organization rather than properties of external entities. Platonism about universals holds that they are part of reality in their own right, independent of the particular entities that instantiate them.
- According to conventionalism, the truth of mathematical statements rests on linguistic conventions or definitions, rather than on their relation to language-independent reality.
- The simulation hypothesis is the view that the whole world and everything within it is a simulated reality, including humans.
- E. Moore (1873–1958) drew on common sense and empirical science to oppose idealism, emphasizing that the world exists independently of the mind.
- Lower levels, by contrast, operate according to more basic mechanisms and are prior to the higher ones.
- There are different ways to conceptualize the relation between fundamental and non-fundamental entities, including the ideas of ontological dependence, metaphysical grounding, reduction, supervenience, and emergence.
- Anti-realism, by contrast, holds that certain aspects of reality depend on mental processes, subjective perspectives, or social conventions.
According to a common view, concrete objects exist in space and time, such as a flower, a horse, and a ship. Events are proposed constituents of reality that occur in time, such as the discovery of penicillin and the Second World War. As individual entities, they contrast with universals, which are general, repeatable entities that can have many instances, such as the color blue, the shape roundness, and the property of being a mammal. Similarly, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics suggests that in quantum measurements, not only one but all possible outcomes occur, interpreted as a branching of the universe into multiple worlds. It is frequently possible to understand the essence of something without knowing whether it exists.
- It denies the existence of knowledge in any form or domain, arguing that knowledge is impossible.
- A central topic in ontology is the categories of being—fundamental classes that map out a comprehensive inventory of reality.
- Discussed in ancient Greek philosophy as the Eleatic principle, it states that to be real is to be able to produce changes and to be affected by them.
- For example, if a planet or a virus is real then it exists on its own and behaves according to its nature, even if people are unaware or hold false beliefs about it.
- One strand of the field analyzes culture-specific worldviews and compares them across societies.
- Responding to Kant’s philosophy, the German idealists sought a unifying principle as the foundation of all reality.
Realism and anti-realism
More general constraints arise from limits of human cognitive faculties rather than situation-specific circumstances, such as facts too complex for anyone to conceive. Testimony is a transmission of knowledge from one person to another through communication.k Memory is the capacity to store information from other sources and make it available to cognitive processes when needed. Reason is the ability to draw logical inferences and arrive at truths independent of immediate sensory input. Anti-realism is understood as a view that identifies the meaning of a statement with the evidence that would support it or the conditions under which a person is justified in asserting it.
Viewpoints on reality
It opposes the idea that world and mind are essentially correlated, emphasizing the mind-independent nature of reality beyond the way humans perceive and think about it. On this view, unobservable entities may be invoked in theory construction to aid prediction but should not be taken to exist. Scientific realism is the view that the best scientific theories provide an accurate description of a mind-independent world. Error theory asserts that all value statements are false because there are no values.i Another form of anti-realism maintains that value statements are neither true nor false but meaningless. According to subjectivism, values depend on the attitudes and preferences of individuals.
Monism and pluralism are families of views about the roles of unity and multiplicity in the structure of reality. According to this view, even a complete understanding of physics would not render sciences dedicated to higher levels, such as psychology, obsolete. Non-reductive physicalists hold that everything is ultimately physical while insisting that higher-level psychological facts cannot be reduced to fundamental physics. In this sense, there can be matter without biological life, whereas life is built upon matter and depends on it. Lower levels, by contrast, operate according to more basic mechanisms and are prior to the higher ones.
Related concepts
Computer scientists discuss how systems of knowledge representation can organize information about reality and make it accessible to computational processes. Reality testing is another suggested psychological function in which individuals distinguish intrapsychic from external events to assess how their experience aligns with reality. It overlaps with the cognitive sciences, which investigate how cognitive processes transform information about the world, and with neuroscience, which studies the brain activities underlying such processes. It concerns the question of how mental and linguistic entities, such as thoughts and words, can establish contact with reality by successfully referring to things in the world. It focuses on how individuals experience reality and how conscious states are intentional or directed towards entities other than themselves.
External links
The reality–virtuality continuum is a theoretical framework that posits a continuous scale of mixed reality forms. It denies the existence of knowledge in any form or domain, arguing that knowledge is impossible. These limitations indicate a gap whereby reality is not fully captured and exceeds knowledge.
Related concepts
Phenomenalism, a related view, reduces physical objects to collections of actual or possible sensory experiences. In this sense, reality does not depend on human knowledge or consciousness and exists apart from them, including the aspects that no one is aware of. In the broadest sense, realism is the view that the external world and its constituents exist as they do regardless of how people perceive or think about them. Unreal entities, by contrast, depend for their existence on thoughts and ideas; they would not arise or would vanish without the mental activity creating or sustaining them. For example, if a planet or a virus is real then it exists on its own and behaves according to its nature, even if people are unaware or hold false beliefs about it.
On this view, higher levels show greater complexity and new phenomena but depend on the lower ones and could not exist without them. Some philosophical approaches rely on the idea of fundamentality and dependence to analyze the world in terms of levels or layers, such as material, biological, psychological, and social reality. In the Hindu tradition, it is often identified with Brahman as the all-pervasive reality and the supreme principle grounding all being.